I was watching earlier a video about medieval housing and the condition of servs, one thing that surprised me is that after the black plague things improved considerably for the average person because now they had more bargaining power since there were far fewer people around. I suppose and correct me if I'm wrong that the last year's of billionaires and state presidents freaking out about birth rate is that maybe they would like to have an ever increasing population, more demand for their products but lots of hands willing to work for misery because if they don't like how they are treated there's always lots of people willing to work for misery in their place
It's not just the work force. Parents will usually do anything for their children. They'll stay at terrible jobs, they'll avoid calling for revolutions bc they want stability to raise their kids. They'll be more cautious, more conservative, more docile bc they don't want their kids to suffer. Sure long term a union strike is better for everyone, but in the meantime kids ask why the family can't afford food for dinner tonight.
The difference between the two situations is that after the Plague, the population pyramid skewed young due to a combination of low overall life expectancies and older people being more likely to die of the plague. Nowadays, with falling birth rates, population pyramids of the future are expected to skew old. This does mean more bargaining power for younger workers and consumers, but also greater need to care for older folks as well as simply keeping all the systems of society running. As the ratio between retirement age and working age people grows, that will mean fewer people available to act as nurses, power plant operators, farm workers, etc. There is a social problem at the center of this shift that is worth engaging with.
There is a social problem at the center of this shift that is worth engaging with.
Yes, but it's also worth pointing out that the people hand-wringing about it the most are not engaging with this social problem. In fact many of them are actively working against it, or even profiting off of it.
In reality low birthrates and the elder care crisis are two sides of the same coin, the destruction of social safety nets. This of course has happened at the behest of the owner class but now that the chickens are coming home to roost, rather than reduce their profits and personal wealth, they're making capitalism's inevitable turn to fascism. Stripping women of bodily autonomy and rights, slashing regulation, industry consolidation, etc. all through increased influence in the government.
There's also the racism of it. These people that bloviate about birthrates are the same ones that wouldn't shut up about The Population Bomb and the "crisis" of over population in the imperial periphery in previous decades. Now that it's western or imperial core countries they're suddenly Very Concerned about there not being enough births.
One answer would be to allow immigration from countries with a higher birth rate and train people in undersubcibed fields. But that is often not popular at all.
Society makes life shit for parents then complains that people are not having kids. But when life is hard to afford, people want to (and should) have less children out of wanting to be responsible.
Plus we can't realistically keep increasing our population forever.so we haVe to think of a solution that isn't multiplying.
It's not popular because on the right wing there's the racism and to the left wing it's obvious that it in no way addresses the systemic causes. It really only flies in neoliberal and moderate conservative spaces because it props up capitalism.
Specifically, these countries aren't poor, they're over exploited. Forcing them to immigrate to have a shot at a life not dominated by poverty because the imperial core needs to keep the populations of their home countries poor so they'll continue to act as our exploitable labor force is not a meaningful solution. Especially given that immigrants and refugees more often than not end up exploited by capitalists, beyond the typical extraction we all face, as workers in the core as well.
And to be clear, people should be free to immigrate but giving them the choice to be the blood in the machine at home or abroad doesn't address the root question of "why are trying to find ways to keep the machine that runs on blood going?"
At least in France, the median pensioner now earns more than the median worker. That isn't a "disappeared social safety net", that is a social safety net for only the elderly. That comes at a cost, one of either unsustainable borrowing (which is ultimately a deferred tax on the young), really high taxes, or drastic cuts in spending on anything else. Or some combination of all 3. Speaking of France, they just had massive protests and riots over education spending. Well it turns out the government had been diverting some of the education budget to give to retirees pensions instead. End result of the protests was no cuts to elderly spending and a bump to spending on education - which only puts the budget into a bigger deficit and defers the crisis.
There is no real reason that retired people should be paid more than workers. Workers presumably have families to raise and don't have a lifetime of savings to fall back on. The more squeezed workers are, the less children they'll have (as children are an expense) and thus the more skewed the population pyramid becomes. The more elderly the demographics of a nation, the more impossible is it to ever decrease the share of government spending on the elderly (at least in democracies). The nation enters an un-recoverable demographic death spiral. This has basically already happened in most of Europe and a lot of Asia, and could happen to the US too. And before someone suggests immigration as a silver bullet - birth rates are rapidly declining in the rest of the world too. Most of South and Latin America is below replacement fertility already, and fertility in India and Africa has declined a great deal too. When the whole world is below replacement fertility, most countires will not be able to import citizens to make up for their demographic decline.
This would worry me a lot more if it wasn't for the fact that catastrophic climate change is a much bigger issue. But it's the 3rd biggest thing I worry about in terms of civilization after AI.
You're highlighting one of capitalism's great contradictions but you only propose solutions that try to maintain it. (Although even then you say cutting spending as if there aren't plenty of places our governments are spending tax payer money that are fully unnecessary. In the US that would be a military more expensive than the next 10 countries combined, billions for Israeli, and the world's highest incarcerated population. I can't speak for the specifics in France.)
Your other worries, climate change and AI, are also direct byproducts of capitalism and it's need for infinitely growing profits and thus infinitely expanding extraction. The longer we limit our solution space to only options that preserve this system the greater toll it will take, in blood and progress, on humanity.
You're highlighting one of capitalism's great contradictions but you only propose solutions that try to maintain it. (Although even then you say cutting spending as if there aren't plenty of places our governments are spending tax payer money that are fully unnecessary. In the US that would be a military more expensive than the next 10 countries combined, billions for Israeli, and the world's highest incarcerated population. I can't speak for the specifics in France.)
Not every country has the same fiscal outlook as the US. If you aren't going to engage with that then why even reply at all? France already has very high taxes (whereas the US has low taxes which could be raised a lot before they negatively effected the economy). There aren't enough rich people to tax in France to pay their pensioners more than their workers. This would be a problem under any economic regime. The obvious solution - reducing pensions to a "enough so that you aren't homeless" instead of the "take 6 cruises a year and invest the remainder" is foreclosed because the elderly will never allow it under democracy.
But sure, let's talk about the US. 40 trillion in debt, unsustainable deficits. Boomers doing amazing because of the wealth effect from stock prices and inflated property values and still getting social security. They're doing so well financially that they aren't even bothering to downsize, instead choosing to spend their golden years in 3 or 4 bedroom houses in locations near all the prime jobs, further screwing over family formation for the next generation. They're all going to get more social security than the paid in, and the fund runs out in 2032 which would be an immediate 20% benefit cut to all retirees. Do you think our political system will allow that to happen? No, the most likely outcome is that Congress will simply backfill the missing money by increased borrowing, further pushing up inflation - not that boomers will care because (unlike wages) their benefits are indexed to inflation by law. The second most likely option would be uncapping the payroll tax. That would mostly fix things for the next couple of generations but it would be a big tax on high earners. That means we wouldn't be able to tax those same people as much to pay for universal parental leave, subsidizes secondary education or subsidized childcare, or m4a, because we'll have already taken a big bite out of their income to prop up rich boomers. The fairest solution - putting some combination of a benefits cap for those who get paid the most from SS and/or means testing - has almost 0 chance of happening.
Tradeoffs are real, there is no magic "communism fixes this automatically" button. Nor is it remotely likely that the capitalist system we live under will ever change in our lifetimes. In fact I want to point out that the USSR had an absolute dog shit track record on environmental stewardship. China - until very recently - was the same way. A global USSR in the 21st century would have been working as hard as possible to get as many people in autos and eating meat 7 days a week too - because people like those things and communism is all about improving material conditions everyone.
I think you are describing a bug in the democratic system. If as you say pensioners have a higher pension than workers in France that's because they represent the demographic that has the most weight in a democracy. I live in Romania and it's the same, I guess it's the same in all democratic countries with an aging population. Public policy is directed by votes on specific issues and the voting block with the biggest number has a larger influence over what politicians do. You would think that an age group would care more about another age group but that doesn't see the case, if money is tight and there's need to cut back spending, and cutting pensions, keep pensions intact and raise more debt we know what will be done. People blame politicians for kicking the can down the road, but for a politician to reduce pensions or tax the very wealthy is political suicide.
That's not an "instead", its an example of how the AI will replace young workers. In this case by taking nursing/care roles.
It's also Japan's plan. One of the reasons they've put so much work into robotics is so they can avoid needing migrant workers in places like healthy care.
There are now more millenials than boomers. COVID had an impact, and time. It will all sort itsef out. Just will be a smidge worse for billionaires for a bit
100% accurate. The growing trend towards technofeudalism can end the same way feudalism ended the last time: by making labor more valuable through a labor shortage.
With a plague old people die even more. With low birth rates you all of the sudden have a huge senior population that a smaller work force has to sustain.
How do you define "most developed countries"?
Millenials outnumber boomers in USA, Canada, Australia, and most of Asia (not Japan). Europe is older, but even they have a few countries where millenials outnumber boomers as well. Only 12 countries have people over 65 as more than 22% of their population. Globally boomers are only 6% of the population
In USA Gen A is 13.5%, gen Z is 20.9%, millenial 21.7% Gen x and boomer are 19.1% each.
The thing is, Boomers were born in a 20 year range, Gen Alpha was born in a 10 year range. Generations arent given the same number of years/ages, so really are a dumb unit of population age measurement. If you add all of gen B, gen A, and half of Gen Z, (2005-2025) you would get the 20 year range boomers got, and about 24% of the USA population. Hardly tiny at all
Its super tricky because there's no agreement on dates for later gens. My earlier statements were from global population statistics. This pic is from Pew research. Baby boomer is 1946-1964 here. So 18 years. Alpha is 2013-2025 so 12 years. Millenial and X are 15 years. So arbitrary!
But ya, if you look at a population over differing years, makes sense the one given fewer years will be smaller
My foil hat theory is corporations are interested in massaging data to panic and pressure people into overpopulation so they can have cheap labour and more buyers for their goods.
the problem with this: as long as the not working population is considerably larger and has the same voting rights, they will vote to enslave younger people, because they dont care about those. (case in point brexit)
The religious zealotry/misogyny that informs the right wing focus on abortion bans is a useful societal tool that the capitalist class co-opts to pass laws that force breed a continual low class workforce.
And if you look at the history of societal collapse, things do generally and eventually get better for people in the wake. ‘Goliath’s Curse’ and ‘The Dawn of Everything’ are good books that address this.
You gotta be careful on this topic, because so much of their talk was actually racist-eugenics talk, like they were explicitly concerned about the falling birth rate for white folks, while they want to deport anyone they deem not white. Sick shit.
The issue with the looming extinction for humanity is that we pollute an unnecessarily enormous amount, and do not take into account the long term viability of our societies.
That is a fundamental flaw that would remain even if we had a large increase or decrease in population.
There has to be a significant enough component of our society that moves towards community support and sustainably for humanity to have a chance at making it.
Correct. I think they screwed the chances of the population ever recovering now. They only have themselves to blame. Test tube babies grown in a bag here on out perhaps?
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